I see this in another way, and I might not be right but my recollection of the matter was around 2008 and the stale state of the (X)HTML spec(s). WHATWG came a

I see this in another way, and I might not be right but my recollection of the matter was around 2008 and the stale state of the (X)HTML spec(s). WHATWG came along and was heavily (as I remember it( supported by Google due to the Chrome browser and lack of evolution from W3C and particularly the sad browser state of IE. Back then Microsoft was sitting on the browser market as Google is today. But Google needed to enforce something different than W3C so it could build a better browser than IE, but with a different (and perhaps a more controlled) spec. Today, web standards is in a much worse state than they were 10 years ago. And having been developing for the web the last 20 years, it is not easier than it was "in the old days". It's perhaps more fun, but it's not easier. And some of that frustration is partly due to the disruption of this specification.